Should You Pay for Pattern Testing?

My thoughts on how's it's been done, and how it might be done better

How I think about things!

If you’re a pattern designer in the quilting industry you probably saw some recent commentary around the question of paying pattern testers.

This was all before the end-of-year holidays. There was the original post (since deleted after she tossed the traffic-driving hand grenade), some hot takes about it, and some equally heated comments - the stuff that got predictably ugly in the high-speed flash mob of social media.

I was called upon to chime in, and I almost did, but what I realized is that this is NOT a hot take convo for me. Call me the deep diver or slow cooker. I wanted to take the time to pull all the threads together in a way that covers more than the surface of the issue.

So here’s my slow-cooked take on “Should we pay pattern testers?”

DUH

The fast and easy answer is, duh, of course you pay them. But for a whole bunch of reasons, the answer gets nuanced, so I will attempt to relay my experience with this over 13+ years of designing quilt patterns.

Paying for Women’s Work

The first thing I want to point out is that, in general, the craft industry, and quilting in particular, is a wild combo of extreme thrift and extraordinary spending. People will happily fill bedrooms, dens, and house additions with more fabric than they can use in several lifetimes, and still balk at paying $12 for a pattern that helps them use said fabric. There are entire underground Facebook groups that exist to illegally distribute copies of purchased patterns, and I get regular emails asking me for coupons, discounts, and “Where’s the free stuff?”

I surmise that this thrift is born of several components:

1.     We’re used to not paying for work made by women, especially around sewing (this also extends to the blind eye cast towards the exploitation of women and children who sew our fast fashion products)

2.     We’re used to getting a LOT of free content, both in and out of the industry

3.     The industry still engages in delivering a LOT of free content: free downloads for email signups, blog/shop/IG hops, new fabric lines, video channels, just because it’s Thursday, etc.¹

4.     There’s a persistent thought that you have to start your pattern biz by first giving away free patterns (you don’t)

5.     Women are cultured to be “nice” and not ask for fair compensation lest they get labeled difficult, aggressive, and unseemly

Hobby or Biz?

Many of us come into this industry having been a hobbyist first, so we’re steeped in this basis of thrift. Thus, when we decide to launch a biz we approach it with the same level of economy, and we don’t invest in the best infrastructure to actually RUN a business. I bet 95% of us never thought about writing a business plan.

When you can make a quilt with thrifted fabric and a 20-year-old hand-me-down sewing machine, it makes sense that you will try to start your business with whatever computer is already in your home, inadequate but free software, and the idea that you won’t pay for anything until you’re in the black.

Bootstrapping

You create your first few patterns, and YOU are the EVERYTHING person… writer, editor, tester, sewist, photographer, SM manager… And because you’re likely surrounded by encouraging quilty friends, they volunteer to help with a lot of things that a legit biz ought to be paying for.

This was definitely me a dozen years ago… I bootstrapped into quilt pattern writing after coming out of grad school with an MFA, right in the middle of a recession, when I couldn’t get a teaching job. I had a computer, a sewing machine, a stash of fabric, 20+ years of quilting experience, and a rudimentary knowledge of Adobe Illustrator. I had been teaching quilting classes locally for years, so I had experience with a lot of pattern-writing styles, not to mention their differing quality and accuracy.

Who are the players?

Before I get too far down the road of my experience, let me back up and define some of the roles involved in pattern design that are part of the “pay them” discussion:

• Technical editing: this covers the technical aspects of making of the quilt: the math, the descriptions, the grammar, the drawings. Sewing is not usually part of this – it’s a hypothetical construction of the quilt.

• Sample sewing: this covers getting a quilt (or any part thereof) made, but usually does not include pattern testing, editing, etc.

• Pattern testing: this covers the actual experience of making the block or quilt; it requires fabric, a sewist, and several hours of their labor, the result being feedback on if the pattern is functionally correct. The fabric may be provided to the tester, or they might use their own (ownership of the final quilt can be determined by this).

• Social Media and Marketing: In the current marketing climate where social media plays a huge part, it becomes necessary to pound the audience with at least a dozen images of the new quilt, preferably showing it in several colorways, in order to run the gauntlet of the algorithm and rise above the noise. Pattern testers’ images have become critical to this, so the tester’s agreement might be required to take decent pictures AND video, and use their social media reach to assist in the marketing.

My experience

As I started my biz, I did ALL the things: I made the quilt, wrote the pattern, then made it again from the pattern to test it. It wasn’t ideal, and the lack of other eyes on it bit me in the patoot more than once.

Also, I started my biz before Instagram had the craft world in its greedy grip, so I wasn’t even considering the photography aspect of pattern testing/marketing. A single good cover image was the goal – not 30 days of content in 4 platform formats including video.

I had friends who performed the tech editing and proof reading in exchange for gratitude, a published pattern, a hug, and whatever swag I could rustle up (I made a lot of fun pins back then). Some of them also sewed anywhere from a block or two to the whole thing. One friend owned a shop and would run pattern testing classes for me with her best students. I had a couple of friends with specific superpowers around making sure you could navigate the patterns based on just the drawings, and calling out where the drawings did not look like the parts on the design wall.

None of this was paid in cold, hard cash. I did a lot of samples for fabric companies back then (also uncompensated beyond fabric – more on that another day) so I often had extra fabric to pass on, but there were no formal agreements, and certainly no compensation that I would consider remotely fair for their efforts. I knew I wasn’t paying enough, but I was broke so I sheepishly and gratefully accepted what was offered.

I want to point out here that this all seemed normal at the time. We were not profitable, so we relied on friends. Then once we had the network of social media, we would put a call out for helpers, and people would respond and help to the best of their capabilities. So many of the helpers did it out of the goodness of their hearts, be it something new to sew, fandom, boredom, or pure kindness. It was just the way this got done.

When you know better…

But like everything else in life, things change, things evolve, and we need new ways to navigate it. When you know better, you don’t have many excuses not to do better.

Just as we’re getting better about asking for fair compensation for what *we* do as pattern designers, we should expect to extend the same fairness to the people that help us. Which means paying fairly for help, and accepting that as a line item in the cost of developing a pattern – no matter how broke you are.

So what do we do when someone still just wants to volunteer for no pay? As was pointed out by several of my colleagues in the most recent discussions, anyone else’s role in the agreement made between two consenting adults is to butt out.

But… is it?

Should it be OK to be in support of women not being paid for their labor around sewing? After centuries of this being “normal”?

As biz owners, I think we need to be the force of change on this front. When someone offers to work for free, I think we need to come up with an arrangement of payment or other compensation (barter, trade) beyond gratitude and a shout out on IG. I think we have a responsibility to teach these lovely helpers that they *should* be getting compensated for their valuable skills.

The last time I hired a sample sewist, she invoiced me for her time at minimum wage. I paid her at a higher wage that I thought was fair for the skills of an experienced quiltmaker. I don’t point this out to polish my halo; I point it out to show that this is the kind of force for change we CAN be. We can CHOOSE not to take advantage of situations that could save us money.

But what if they really don’t want to be paid?

Recently, a friend wanted to make a quilt themed for a specific holiday and after chatting it over with me, she decided to do it in a pattern I happened to be developing. Her quilt served to test the pattern for me, and she is resolutely refusing to be paid beyond me treating her next time we get ice cream. As a close quilty pal, she has free run of my studio, stash, design wall, and help anytime she needs it, and to her the trade is even, despite my opinion otherwise.

So do I disrespect my friend by forcing payment on her that she clearly does not want to take from me?

Can you see why a hot take wasn’t going to nail a clear answer here!?

BE a BIZ

As biz owners, we need to run actual businesses. “I don’t pay money to my testers, I wouldn’t be able to afford it” is not a business model, and it’s short-sighted in your care for your customers.

We need to invest in the infrastructure and support to make the best product possible because that’s the way our industry, our colleagues, and our customer relationships will survive. And if you can’t build compensated testing/tech editing into your process, you don’t actually have a business.

Name a business you know that was profitable in their first quarter with no capital investment.

Me neither.

I know. You bootstrapped in and don’t want to be unprofitable for a second more than necessary. But you need to spend money to make it. And if you’re not willing to invest in your biz and work to grow it to profitability, why on earth are you doing this?

Responsibility to the Industry

If your intent is to dabble, not make money, and clutter the field with free and/or untested patterns, you’re actually contributing to our customers’ reticence to pay for patterns. I constantly hear “I bought a pattern that had issues, why should I pay for another?” Every pattern we let out of the house untested and unedited harms the customer’s trust in what we do, which harms us ALL.

But will they pay?

As we know, we have a subset of customers who engage our industry without opening their wallets, so it’s right to worry about adding expenses to your biz without knowing if you can recoup the costs.

This isn’t going to improve if we don’t take seriously our collective responsibility to change the historical perception of women’s work to one of fair compensation. We have to educate out the cheapskate expectations of the customers by pricing things at the appropriate amount for the labor and materials that go into them. And if the result is a product that can’t be sold in a way that makes or a profit, then you have proven, no matter how painfully, that the product is not viable in the marketplace.²

What does this mean? It means adopting an industry average range of pricing and drastically minimizing the free offerings. It means drying up the sources of free patterns so that paying for patterns becomes the norm. It certainly means we must stop subsidizing anyone who doesn’t want to or can’t pay. The more money we earn, the more we can afford the developmental expenses of our products.

I know. You feel bad for the customer on a fixed income that wants your pattern. But quilting is not a life-supporting necessity like food – it’s actually a non-essential hobby. The hard truth is that unless you’re in the 1%, we all are on incomes that are fixed at some level, and we all have to make decisions about where we allocate our discretionary spending. In short, if your customer can buy fabric, they can buy a pattern.

Systemic under-payment for women’s work

Here’s the thing… part of the reason women end up on frugal fixed incomes is because over their lifetimes, they had less earning power (wage discrimination, sex discrimination, single parenting penalties, student loans, you name it), thus lower overall buying power and retirement savings. And if women who own businesses keep subsidizing the products they sell, we will also under-earn, putting our own financial futures into similar jeopardy. It’s beyond generational; it’s a systemic cycle that we need to break.

Next steps?

So what do we do? My thoughts are these (in order):

• Get off the free pattern train – take away the opportunities to not be paid

• Add compensated testing/tech editing to your $$ or trade budget

• Price your work appropriately – research the industry averages and align to them

• Educate our customers that, in this era, women’s work requires fair compensation

• Take care of our customers with the well-made products

What are yours?

Please chime is with your thoughts - I’d love to read what you think.

1 If done as a strategic loss leader this isn’t a bad thing, but a lot of it isn’t, and it still perpetuates an expectation of getting stuff you don’t have to pay for. You can offer a freebie to collect an email addy, but you can’t control how quickly they unsubscribe after they take the download.

 2 Go look at Kickstarter if you want to see amazing proof of concept experiments… the good stuff gets funded, the bad stuff never makes it to market.